“Why?”
He cupped her face between his hands and waited for her to touch for him. She didn’t. He couldn’t blame her. Still, the loss of her comforting caress hurt.
“I must break our bond before my siblings succumb to madness. I’d thought only they bore the curse. I was wrong. I do too.”
The parallel to what Dar had done to her became clear. They’d both damned her, the two males in the world she should’ve been able to trust with her life—mate and father.
Her guarded gaze assessed him, demanding the truth. Although he’d wanted to shield her from the ugliness of his world, he couldn’t. She was as much a part of it as him, and there was no way to ease the reality of their situation. Better she accept their bleak future than hold on to false hope.
Calan gave her the grim conclusion he’d arrived at in the hours since he’d left his father. “By starting the mate bond, I opened a pathway to you. The fairy magic that fuels the curse is alive. It recognizes you and wants the power you can feed it.”
“For the same reason the sluaghs do. I’m still Seelie.”
He inclined his head. It made perfect sense. The Seelie’s strength was what had allowed a magical world to form where none had been. They’d made their own realm and filled it with dragons and castles, everything Harley had fantasized about, but it was no more than a shadow of what it once had been. The Unseelie Court didn’t have the power to sustain it. Harley could. She held both the goodness of the Seelies to breathe life into the fairy realm and the taint of the Unseelies to appease the curse Arawn had placed upon the fairies. She’d become the ultimate fuel source.
“Yes, you are stronger than Dar, which is why it wants you. If the Huntsmen lose their fight to insanity, the curse will rush to me, and through me, to you. I must sever our mate bond to spare you from suffering the punishment meant for your father. Do you understand?”
For a long moment, she only stared at him. Finally she cleared her throat. “Yes, but you’ll mate me again after you defeat Dar, right?”
Calan dropped his hands and turned away. “No, I can’t. I have only one circle to give. You were my one chance, my one mate, my one love. There will never be another.”
Her breath hitched. “So you can’t love me if we’re not mated?”
“I’ll always love you.” He glanced over his shoulder. “No matter what happens or who you end up with, I will be here. I just won’t be your mate.”
She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “What do you mean, who I end up with?”
Calan locked his knees to stop him from going to her and forced his fingers to uncurl. “I hope that once my brothers are free, you’ll find one of them pleasing, maybe more so than me, and give him your love.”
“What if my love has already been given?” She stepped forward. “What if I said those three words you’ve stopped me from uttering and completed our bond right now?”
“Then you’ll have negated my sacrifice. I’m giving you up so you have a chance at life, maybe not the one you or I desire, but life all the same. You can fight the lure of your heritage as you’ve done without me, or you can give one of my brothers a chance at earning your love and being the male I cannot be.” He made his way to the door, each step ripping his heart open.
“I don’t want another mate.”
Calan stepped into the hallway, gaze straight ahead. “Then that is your choice. But at least you have one.”
With that, he closed the door and left his heaven behind.
Chapter Thirty-One
Harley stared at the closed door for a long time before she slid down the wall and huddled on the floor. A crazed laugh escaped.
“I got dumped.”
Worse than that. Her heart got stomped on. She’d given it to Calan the night before, but he’d never felt it. After the first time they’d made love, he’d closed his mind to hers. She pulled her shaky hand out of her pocket and studied the two interlocking circles on her palm.
“Words might have power, Calan, but so does love.”
Harley traced the symbol, his circle, then hers. Tears rolled down her face while her anger built. She wavered between wanting to destroy something and bawling her eyes out. Either extreme would alleviate the pain building in her heart, but she couldn’t give in to them. Calan wasn’t close to bring her back from the edge. She was on her own. Alone.
I don’t want to be alone. I want my mate.
But she couldn’t have him. They’d been damned before they even had a chance.
The room spun, and she swayed. Harley squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t help. She teetered on the edge. Insanity waited for her. It’d be easy to just let go. She wouldn’t hurt if she didn’t care about anything. Was that so wrong?
Laughter echoed in her head as if answering her question. The grating sound irritated her, reminding her why she couldn’t slip. Eyes closed and hands fisted, she dragged up the memory of Calan’s eyes, exactly as she’d done in the years they’d been separated. The laughter cut off, along with the pressure behind her eyes. Slow, deep breaths calmed the last of the tremors shaking her frame. Finally, her heart rate returned to normal.
Sanity returned. At least for the moment. And I had better use it wisely. Next time, I might not be so lucky.
No. Time was against her. It always had been. She sat up and went over everything Calan had told her. The nobility of his actions landed heavily on her
